How much time do you spend on-call?

Our on call policy is based on the regular employees doing a normal eight hour day, and the on call person begins his/her DUTY at 5PM monday until 6AM the following day, for one week, from 5PM to 6AM only. The on call person must stop in the office to pick up repair/tool kits just for those customers equipment that have to be supported 24/7. If the off going person fails to return the parts to the office on Monday, they are resonsible to provide the support until the parts are returned so the next person can take up the gauntlet. Luckily not all of our customers are willing to pay for or need 24/7 coverage.

We are a 24/7/365 regional hospital. All of our staff is subject to call in different ways. Like you we started with a weekly call schedule. Every one except the analysts had to take the beeper, cell phone and laptop home. That lasted until they were getting two or three calls a night.

We finally went to 24/5 coverage. During the week, we have three shifts; days, evenings and nights. In order to get these positions productive, we have moved most of the computer setup and reformat to second and third shifts. They are also responsible for calling the analysts when something goes wrong and implementing the solution set for the problems.

What this does is to relieve the normal day shift from most of the weekday after hours support.

Then everyone only has to worry about call on weekends.

The analysts are on call 24/7, but they have hands on the other end of the phone to help fix the problem so it doesn't take so long. This way, the only really functional requirement is that we have to get our brain in gear at 3:00 a.m.

Most of the time, I get called about 3 times a week somewhere around 1:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. That is when the end of day process starts and end, and those are critical points where problems seem to show up.

It is not optimal, but it is working, and our people can sustain it. We have 14 support and 4 analysts for 1200 users.

I recently worked for a large shop that required on-call. They had a primary/backup type setup and a call escalation tree.

However, when the call got escalated to 1st level management, he/she would just go through the numbers in his cell phone until he found someone, on call or not. Even those on vacation were subject to calls if the primary/backup did not answer or could not solve the problem.

They did not compensate for on-call, nor did the off-hour calls excuse you from the 45 hours (8-5)you were supposed to be in the office every week.

This company even charged the people who were issued phones $15 a month for any personal calls they might make on the company cell phone.

Needless to say, I have moved on to a better environment.

I am responsible for keeping the network up from 8-5 M-F. if it goes down on weekends or nights it is TS. I do come in on the odd saturday to make changes that would disrupt workflow during the "up" hours.

I have had one outage during the "up" hours while we had electricity. the flash in my firewall got corrupted and I had to reload from an image I had saved. unfortunately, it had been so long since I had reloaded the image that I had to put in a TAC to do it.

During all other network outages, we did not have lights either. Ah the sound of APC alarms in the morning. :-)

I've worked in three very different organizations that handled the 24/7/365 situations in very different ways.

One organization was an ISP that simply had 24/7 support on-site, though truth be told the night shift tech and supervisor often ended up playing games and monitoring maintenance with the occasional call from a customer.

Another organization had 6 people on the 1st line rotation and 6 people on the 2nd line rotation. The 1st line took all the calls and, if they are unable to fulfill the request due to skill or restricted access permissions, the call would be passed on to the 2nd line rotation. Not surprisingly, Help Desk folks were on the 1st line and Engineers were on the 2nd line. Carrying the pager happened in one week intervals and you were likely to be on call for a week once every month and a half. Compensation was pitiful when I started, but was eventually increased to a pretty respectable sum. Any time spent after hours was directly compensated through overtime pay, but not comp time. Fortunately, call volume wasn't particularly high, except at the beginning of the weekends. The expectation was that calls would be picked up within 15 minutes and the duties grew and expanded to include carrying a laptop and an EVDO-enabled phone during my tenure there.

The last organization had about 50 people on the on-call rotation. There were two tracks: primary and secondary and you only had to be on call one day at a time. The primary on-call person would receive all the calls and the secondary would only come into play if the primary doesn't respond in a timely manner. Due to the sheer number of people on the rotation, you were basically on-call once a month. We were salaried and not given additional compensation, though being a time & materials shop, any time we spent after hours contributed to our billable hours. Calls were picked up by an answering service and the primary was expected to pick them up within 15 minutes; secondaries had 15 minutes to answer from the time they were contacted. After 30 minutes, calls were escalated to management.

Speculating about your situation, having something workable with 3 people on the rotation might be challenging. The best things to take into it would be compassion and respect, in my opinion. Pay them a stipend for taking on the on call duties, especially since you know they're taking multiple calls a night. If you can directly compensate with overtime, do it. If not, beef up the stipend and try to work in some comp time. If your people feel that they are being respected and their needs are being met, then the onerous duty of taking the pager won't seem quite as bad. If they feel like their after hours efforts aren't being appreciated, it's very easy for the human mind to start looking for evidence for why it's going to suck.

While we all have a responsibility for our own attitudes toward work, it's a lot easier when management is respectful and appreciative of the fact that our lives often get "put on hold" when we carry the pager.

support the corporate mainframes. We have two groups, Group A and Group B. Each group has 20 or
so mainframes. We are on-call about once every 4 weeks and we do get compensated - $180 for the week. The systems are pretty stable and it is not unusual to go for the entire week without a call. That said, I had a bad wwekend a little bit ago. Conference calls at 1 am are not fun. Hardware issues on that one.

In our local county government we have 5 techs in the on-call rotation. Each tech carries a cell phone for two weeks (Full pay period) and responds to each call within 30 minutes via the cell. Compensation level is $15 per day and hours are accrued if a visit is needed. Most Techs take the acrued hours as comp-time because they are valued at 1.5 times standard hours. A minimum per pay period is $210.

Fortunately, we have a fairly stable system with a very intelligent network manger and engineer. Generally the Techs assess the problem and call whomever authored the program, if it's in-house software, or the server god, who do can much from home. If it's a local p/c problem, the techs has a wide latitude to swipe another p/c, printer, etc, if the kaput unit is critical.

Every technical career involves many long hours with projects, support, disaster recovery, to name just a few activities. Once you are in this industry long enough, you realize there are unfair situations whether placed upon you intentionally or not. As a support person, you may put in 100 hours more per year than those in the department with less seniority. As this person, you may have a wife and kids while the other people with less seniority are single and possibly younger or older, with less or more experience. One day you realize the reason you are putting in more hours is because in a glitch, when systems are down and the company is loosing money, the only person your boss and VP want close to the problem is you! So it is a mixed blessing that you are paying dearly for.
(It is also correctlable when this person realizes she/he is better off sharing knowledge with others [teamwork] rather than hording it sacrificing her/his life and gaining spotlight when management may see through him as well.)

Where am I going with this? These on-call periods don't last forever. Jobs change, lay-offs happen, people get promoted. In the example above, the 100+ more hour person grins and bears it for a year without complaint and may benefit through more responsibilty resulting in hire pay or promotion. Or, with an unexpected, unannounced bonus because he impressed a regional VP last May by solving a problem in record time. I know what you are thinking...believe it or not it does happen. There are decent people out there who recognize devotion. It is also true however, that you never see one of these situations above. Say after 18-months of staying up three times a week and weekends you are laid-off. The next job might bring with it indirect rewards since during this past period you gained valuable exerience, and demonstrated seasoning and devotion. Just make sure you adveritise this devotion in the job interview.

In all, that Sunday after Thanksgiving in Chicago while your extended family is back in Georgia paints a negative picture to those reading who can relate, also know the sacrifice has lead to a career benefits one way or another later on.

A small note on organizing support. I have some experience in this area over many organizations. There is no totally fair support structure that has been created by humans or computers to date. You train help desk people, they leave for better jobs. I would guess the one organization who has solved this problem in four year increments in the military. Take the satisfaction you get in solving these issues at this time of your career, and know that it won't be forever that you are enjoying Thanksgiving on a raised floor!

Definition of On-call

Introduction There are several different types of On-call in ElectricityUtilitycompany IT. These are 24x7 support, extended support, and ad hoc support. This topic defines what these types of support are and how they differ.

24x7 Support Definition 24x7 support is support that is required at all times. In many cases the applications that are supported under 24x7 support do not have an ?outside of business hours? to them; they are used the same way all the time.

Extended Support Definition Extended support is support that is required for a set period outside of business hours but not 24x7. Extended support would not cover support overnight.

Ad Hoc Support Definition Ad hoc support is support that is not known about in advance, or is not of a regular enough frequency to warrant 24x7 or extended support. All applications that do not have 24x7 or extended support may require ad hoc support. An established agreement must exist with the customer that includes the requirement for support, infrequently, outside of business hours and that this support is provided on a best efforts basis only.

Rosters 24x7 and Extended support will have a roster in place that states who the Primary On-call person is for any given period, and who the Back Up On-call person is.

Ad Hoc support does not require rosters.

See Rosters page 13 for more information.

Callout Definition A Callout is any call that is logged with a Total Service type that occurs after the On-call person has finished their normal working day and at any time during the weekends or public holidays. Calls that are received prior to the start of an On-call person?s normal working day can be claimed as callouts.

Primary On-call

Definition The Primary On-call is the person who is rostered on to support applications outside of standard business hours.

Responsibilities The Primary On-call person is responsible for:
? First point of contact for all incidents raised to the Service Desk
? Responding to all incidents assigned to their portfolio outside of business hours as per SLA requirements
? Resolving, to the customers satisfaction, all incidents assigned to their portfolio outside of business hours as per SLA requirements
? Escalating issues with incidents as necessary
? Keeping the Service Desk up to date on progress of all incidents assigned to their portfolio outside of business hours as per SLA requirements and as appropriate
? Handing over to their Back Up in the case of an unplanned event that means that they are unable to continue to meet their availability
? Ensuring that any changes or issues that occurred to the systems during their On-call shift are handed over to someone who will be in the office the next day if the Primary is not going to be in first thing.

Support Availability Within the support times a person who is the Primary On-call person on a roster for support must be:
? able to be contacted by phone at all times
? able to respond to logged incidents within the agreed SLA time
? able to be working on resolving the incident within 30 minutes, includes contacting customers via telephone.
? able to be in the office and working within a reasonable time relative to the SLA for the incident.

Remuneration The Primary On-call person will be paid an availability allowance and an hourly rate for the hours worked

For further information on remuneration see Remuneration on page 15

Reporting The Primary On-call is required to:
? ensure that all Callouts are marked as such in the Service Desk tool
? report to the Portfolio Manager the number of Callouts
? report to the Portfolio Manager the length of time on Callouts
? report all time spent in the FMIS Time Recording system
Continued on next page

Primary On-call, Continued

Planned Outages When maintenance that requires a planned outage is required to be done outside of business hours, it is expected that this work will normally be covered by the On-call person, plus any other resources as deemed necessary by the individual coordinating the work.

For work related to a project, the Project Manager will negotiate the resource requirements with the Portfolio Manager.

The Portfolio Manager may, at their own discretion, require the out of hours planned work to be undertaken by someone other than the On-call person e.g. the work may be specialised in an area outside of the capability of the On-call person. The process for the Portfolio Manager to identify, negotiate and assign other staff for this work is outside of the scope of this policy.

Daily jobs Routine jobs that need to be done during the on-call period, for services that have either 24x7 or Extended support rosters, will be undertaken by the Primary On-call person.

Back Up On-call

Definition The Back Up On-call is the person who is rostered to be able take over the Primary On-call role if required.

Responsibilities The Back Up On-call person is responsible for:
? being the first person that the Primary person can call for assistance if they are unable to resolve a problem
? responding to an escalation from the Service Desk if there has been no response from the Primary person by the end of the SLA resolution time
? taking over the Primary On-call person?s responsibilities if they are unable to continue for any reason

Support Availability Within the support times a person who is the Back Up On-call person on a roster for support must be:
? able to be contacted by phone at all times
? able to be in phone contact with the Service Desk and customers at all times

Ad-hoc Support Availability Ad-hoc support has no Back Up On-call provision.

Remuneration The Back Up On-call person will be paid an availability allowance and an hourly rate for the hours worked

For further information on remuneration see Remuneration on page 15

Reporting The Back Up On-call is required to:
? report to the to the Portfolio Manager any time that they have to take over the responsibilities of the Primary that are not planned
? ensure that all Callouts are marked as such in the Service Desk tool
? report to the Portfolio Manager the number of Callouts
? report to the Portfolio Manager the length of time on Callouts
? report all time spent in the FMIS Time Recording system

Application Specialist

Definition An application specialist is a person who has specialist knowledge on a certain application.

Responsibilities An application specialist may be required to assist if the On-call person and / or their Back Up are unable to resolve an incident. An application specialist is only required to use best efforts to resolve the incident.

Availability An application specialist is not required to be available at all times.

Remuneration An application specialist will only be paid for the hours worked.

For further information on remuneration see Remuneration on page 15.

Reporting The application specialist is required to report to their Portfolio Manager any times when they are called out and what they were called out for and
report all time spent in the FMIS Time Recording system

Managers

Definition A manager is someone in ElectricityUtilitycompany IT who manages staff or contractors that provide On-call support for ElectricityUtilitycompany.

Portfolio Manager Responsibilities The Portfolio Managers are responsible for:
? Ensuring rosters are in place, and regularly reviewed and maintained
? Ensuring that sufficient resources needed to do On-call are available
? Collect and review On-call reports from Portfolio team members
? Participation in the escalation process
? Approving additional hours worked as On-call for payment
? Defining the within portfolio communication process for Major Incidents
? Manage resource availability for out of hours Project work as required
? Review support and escalation processes and outcomes to ensure the agreed SLAs can be, and are being, met.
? Identify and undertake improvements to reduce the extent of out of hours calls, and escalations

Other Manager Responsibilities Other Managers within IT are responsible for being available as required under the IT escalation processes and for approving additional hours worked as On-call for payment.

Availability A manager (Portfolio or other) is required to be available on a best efforts basis only.

Competence for On-call

Required competence for On-call Portfolio Managers will define the specific competencies required for a portfolio team member to be on the On-call roster, or to be available on an ad hoc basis.

On-call Trainee Individuals who have not yet attained the required level of competency (On-call trainee) may be Primary On-call, but only where a competent Back Up On-call person is rostered. The On-call trainee will report-in to the Back Up On-call before deeming an incident resolved.

Changing Competence A portfolio team member who is deemed to be competent, but subsequently fails to sustainably demonstrate this, may be removed from the On-call roster, or be reclassified as On-call trainee, and be required to reach the necessary level and return to the Roster. Such action is at the discretion of the Portfolio Manager.

Rosters

Roster responsibilities Portfolio Managers will establish and maintain the portfolio?s roster.

Portfolio team members will ensure that the Portfolio Manager is aware, in advance, of any leave that will be taken or any other factors that may affect the roster.

Exceptions to standard Rosters Portfolio team members may negotiate with their Portfolio Manager, for an adjustment to the number and frequency of shifts. The Portfolio Manager may make adjustments to the roster at their discretion, but must give staff a reasonable notice period of change.

Exemption from being on the Roster Portfolio team members may apply to their Portfolio Manager for exemption from the roster for extended periods due to special circumstances. The decision on the request will be made on a case by case basis at the Portfolio Manager?s discretion

Leave and rosters The Primary and Back Up rostered people must not be on leave simultaneously.

ElectricityUtilitycompany is closed For the days where ElectricityUtilitycompany?s Offices are closed, such as between Christmas Day and New Years day, the On-call provisions detailed in this policy apply.

Filling a roster If a portfolio manager is unable to fill a roster they have the authority to negotiate with staff and contractors (not necessarily in their portfolio) to get the required level of support in consultation with the ElectricityUtilitycompany manager of the resource be they employed or contracted.

Equipment

Computers ElectricityUtilitycompany will provide laptops for all people on On-call rosters. These will be built with the standard ElectricityUtilitycompany image for the portfolio and no software other than that required for support of the applications is to be installed on these laptops.

The laptops will come with bags that allow easy and comfortable transport to and from work.

Remote Access ElectricityUtilitycompany will provide a suitable high-speed connection for all people on On-call rosters. Access will be via VPN.

Building Access After hours access to the car park in ElectricityUtilitycompany house will be available for On-call support of services that require 24x7 or extended support. Car parks will need to be vacated during working hours.

Mobile Phones Mobile phones will be provided by ElectricityUtilitycompany for all people who can be expected to be called for support outside of standard business hours.

Personal calls can be made on these phones, and personal calls should be refunded as per ElectricityUtilitycompany Corporate policy ?Cellular Phone Use and Management?.

Remuneration
Overview

Introduction The remuneration for On-call has two different types, Weekdays and Weekends, and Holidays. This section covers the differences.

Contents This section contains the following topics:

Topic See Page
Weekdays and Weekends
16

Public Holidays
17

Weekdays and Weekends

Availability Allowance An On-call allowance is payable for all people who are rostered to provide Primary or Back Up On-call. The allowance that is applicable will be applied pro-rata for those providing Extended support.

This allowance will be $46 per full day on duty for 24x7 support, $13 per day for extended support (based on the support hours for Grid Tracker, Mon-Fri 7am-9pm, Sat/Sun 8am-6pm).

Hourly rate An hourly rate will be applicable for all work related to incidents done while On-call.

This will be the equivalent of time and a half based on the employee?s relevant normal pay rate.

Minimum Payment A minimum of 2 hours will be paid for each callout. Any further incidents that are received during the minimum period from the first callout will be deemed to be included in that minimum until the total work is over the minimum.

Payment for planned outages Work for planned outages outside of 7am to 7pm will be paid at the same hourly rate as for incidents.

In most cases it will be the rostered Primary On-call who is expected to do this work.

Time Off in Lieu (TOIL) Hours that are worked for Callouts may be taken as Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) instead of payment. The timing of this needs to be negotiated with the individual?s manager, and is at their discretion. This is managed under the ElectricityUtilitycompany workplace flexibility process.

Public Holidays

Primary On-call, Back-up On-call, and Planned Outages on Public Holidays Where a public holiday falls or is observed, by agreement, on a day that would otherwise be a working day for an employee, and the employee is Primary On-call or a Back Up On-call on that day, they are classified as a restricted employee. In these circumstances, the employee shall be paid:

a) Salary for the day at the normal daily rate; and
b) Payment at the rate of half time for any hours actually worked for the first 8 hours (with a minimum of 2 hours); and
c) Payment at the rate of time and a half for any hours actually worked after the first 8 hours

and will be entitled to an alternative day which will be paid at the employee?s relevant daily pay for the day which is taken.

Ad-hoc and Application Specialist Callouts on Public Holidays Where a public holiday falls or is observed, by agreement, on a day that would otherwise be a working day for an employee and the employee is called out for ad hoc support or as an applications specialist, (they are not classified as a restricted employee), the employee shall be paid:

a) Salary for the day at the normal daily rate; and
b) Payment at the rate of half time for any hours actually worked for the first 8 hours (with a minimum of 2 hours); and
c) Payment at the rate of time and a half for any hours actually worked after the first 8 hours

and will be entitled to an alternative day which will be paid at the employee?s relevant daily pay for the day which is taken.

Employees who are not classified as ?restricted? and who are not called out on a public holiday, will be paid their ordinary pay only for the holiday and will not be entitled to an alternative day.

Availability Allowance An On-call allowance is payable for all people who are rostered to provide Primary or Back Up On-call. The allowance that is applicable will be applied pro-rata for those providing Extended support.

This allowance will be $46 per full day on duty for 24x7 support, $13 per day for extended support (based on the support hours for Grid Tracker, Mon-Fri 7am-9pm, Sat/Sun 8am-6pm).
Continued on next page

Public Holidays, Continued

Payment for planned outages Work for planned outages outside of 7am to 7pm will be paid at the same hourly rate as for incidents.

In most cases it will be the rostered Primary On-call who is expected to do this work.

Time Off in Lieu (TOIL) Hours that are worked for Callouts may be taken as Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) instead of payment. The timing of this needs to be negotiated with the individual?s manager, and is at their discretion. This is managed under the ElectricityUtilitycompany workplace flexibility process.

ElectricityUtilitycompany Corporate Day The ElectricityUtilitycompany Corporate day is treated the same as a Public Holiday for anyone who is On-call at that time.

Reporting

Weekly reporting On-call personnel will provide weekly reports to the Portfolio Manager including the following information:
? number of times called out.
? Status when called out, i.e. Primary on-call, Back Up on-call, Application Specialist or Ad-hoc support
? Incident status (especially if unresolved)
? Commentary on the call-out period

Monitoring The Portfolio Manager will monitor the following:
? Number of times a Application Specialist is called out and why
? Number of times Ad-hoc support is required for each application
? Number of times that each person is Primary or Back Up
? Number of Callouts the Primary and Back Up get
? Length of time to resolve Callouts
? Number of changes that are performed outside of Business Hours
To ensure the On-call service if performing adequately and identify areas for improvement

Time Recording All time that is spent on Callout work must be entered into the FMIS Time Recording system. Time that payment is being claimed for must also be documented to the nearest ? hour and given to the Portfolio Manager.

The Portfolio Manager will approve the time and pass the information on to Payroll to process for payment.

Obligations

OSH ElectricityUtilitycompany are responsible for taking all practicable steps to ensure that the environment that the On-call person works from at home is free from hazards in the immediate work environment and that the equipment provided is safe and set up correctly.

The On-call person is responsible for making sure that they understand what a safe working environment is and informing their manager of any potential hazards.

Security ElectricityUtilitycompany are responsible for ensuring that there is a safe and secure way to access the building after hours.

ElectricityUtilitycompany are also responsible for ensuring that the ElectricityUtilitycompany offices at which On-call work may be done are safe during times that people are working in the office.